It is chock full of one year on assessments, but this snippet is a start:

Tens of thousands of migrant workers, roughly half undocumented, have come to the Gulf Coast to work in the recovery. Many were recruited. Most workers tell of being promised good wages and working conditions and plenty of work. Some paid money up front for the chance to come to the area to work. Most of these promises were broken. A tour of the area reveals many Latino workers live in houses without electricity, other live out of cars. At various places in the city whole families are living in tents. Two recently released human rights reports document the problems of these workers.

Immigrant workers are doing the dirtiest, most dangerous work, in the worst working conditions. Toxic mold, lead paint, fiberglass, and who knows what other chemicals are part of daily work. Safety equipment is not always provided. Day laborers, a new category of workers in New Orleans, are harassed by the police and periodic immigration raids. Wage theft is widespread as employers often do not pay living wages, and sometimes do not pay at all. Some of the powers try to pit local workers against new arrivals – despite the fact that our broken Gulf Coast clearly needs all the workers we can get.

Full Text of the speech given by Ross “Rocky” Anderson, the mayor of SLC. A peace rally was held as the American Legion met and Bush dropped in for one of his many Get with the Program, Stay the Course, As long as I am President… speeches.

Go Rocky!

Let’s hear it: “Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!”

Let no one deny we are patriots. We love our country, we hold dear the values upon which our nation was founded, and we are distressed at what our President, his Administration, and our Congress are doing to, and in the name of, our great nation.

Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.

A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating President.

That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That person is a member of a frightening culture of obedience – a culture where falling in line with authority is more important than choosing what is right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I suspect, that person is afraid – afraid we are right, afraid of the truth (even to the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in with an oppressive, inhumane regime that does not respect the laws and traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst presidency our nation has ever had to endure.

In response to those who believe we should blindly support this disastrous President, his Administration, and the complacent, complicit Congress, listen to the words of Theodore Roosevelt, a great President and a Republican, who said: The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. [snip]

And last (for now) an Australian site that I landed on searching for snips and bits on Rupert Murdoch. As he has been so carcinogenic.

In the editorial pages of Murdoch’s antipodean flagship, The Australian, the bombing of Beirut is presented as “Israel doing Lebanon a favour” and restive Arabs are described as “Nazis”. None of this should be surprising, as Murdoch revealed to the Hollywood Reporter that his media ventures are “not as important to me as spreading my personal political beliefs” (November 23, 2005).

It does not seem to figure in Murdoch’s personal accounting that over half a million civilians are now dead or disfigured as a result of the wars he has already promoted. Instead of reconsidering his politics, like other lapsed neocons, Murdoch is still blazing away with his tools of the trade: hate, lies, fear and censorship.

In fairness, I have not noticed any great rush to confess, change, find the damned “course” and throw it in the trash, etc., from the US Neo-Cons. A rather weak by design mea maxima-tiny culpa from Eliot Cohen a few months ago in the Wapo… little in the face of horror and rivers of blood.

The site takes after Murdoch – and Howard – in grand fashion and lays into Blair as part of it all. I liked the art as well.

You may recall War Nerd’s writings on war, the Hizbollah – Israeli war from Godzilla in a Headscarf… well, he has checked in again at The Exile. (Emphasis is mine.)

And speaking of AKs, another lesson of this war is that the era of the automatic rifle as basic small arm may be ending. We may be heading back to some kind of shoulder-fired cannon (just like Champlain’s!). Most of the IDF casualties in this war were inflicted by RPGs, just like most of our casualties in Iraq. The Chechen guerrillas have gone to a new formation, with three-man teams consisting of two RPG gunners with one AK man whose only job is to protect the RPGers. That may be the wave of the future.

Of course all these moves would’ve been wasted if the Israelis had caught on to what Hezbollah was up to, which leads to another lesson, one I’m always preaching: in asymmetrical warfare, Intelligence is everything. Or in this case, counterintelligence. Israeli intel, Shin Bet and Mossad, has been the real strength of the IDF for a long time. They’re the best and most ruthless intelligence agencies since the USSR went bankrupt. But they had no idea what was waiting for them over the border. That’s incredible, the most shocking news of all.

Remember, the IDF has instant access to all US military satellite intel, so this means that our tech intel was just as ineffective as Mossad’s more traditional infiltration methods. That means Hezbollah, a huge organization with branches in every street in South Beirut and South Lebanon, has a scary effective counterintelligence branch. We all know the CIA is useless, but when Mossad and Shin Beth can’t even penetrate the lower levels of a mass movement like Hezbollah, then the world has turned upside down.

And it has, folks. That’s why this is such a huge, huge war. No matter what the waterheads on CNN try to tell you, the IDF lost totally, and every force configured like it — such as, oh, the US Army or Air Force — lost too. The Gophers are beating the shit out of the gardeners on this course. The gophers just kicked the shit out of Tiger Woods.

It’s hard to say who gains in the long run. Short term, sure, Hezbollah wins big. But in the long run, maybe what’s happened is that the day when genocide replaces the farce called “CI Warfare” just got a lot closer.

All I can say is that as the top generals in the widening battlespace, Abizaid and Casey, lie and lie again to all of us – it is utterly reprehensible what is being said, from the CinC down – as they lie and lie and lie again, may their bowels growl and turn to water.

hmmm I don’t agree with everything Joe Bageant comes up with for this essay, but some of it: yes.

These are his closing stanzas:

[D]oes American liberalism/progressivism have a moral core? A heart? A kingdom within? Time will tell.

But the time is past for sympathy toward those who sleep with the Democratic party in that two-bed brothel called American party politics, then claim there were no other options but the party of least betrayal.

Personally, I feel betrayed by the only party we ever had that reached out (even when it had to be dragged kicking and screaming by blacks and unions) to the kind of folks in the Shenandoah, the kind who raised me the best way they knew how-those poor beaten down, ill-educated, preyed upon Americans who find little community but that of churches and beer joints, and have resigned themselves to little or no justice on this earth, save that promised by God.

Stepping from the Shenandoah’s dimness onto the pavement, the August sunlight plows you in the face like a Buick. Denney is coming down the street, face swollen and splotched in reaction to his treatments. Cars float along as if suspended by the heat. An angelic featured young man in, mixed race with budding red dreads, sits on the same nearby porch he sits on every day, unemployed and unemployable because he cannot read. The holy rollers at the Pentecostal mission are hollering and thrashing and singing about “The Old Ship of Zion.” The private ghost of a skinny kid yells “Paaaaaapers! Paaaaapers!” And the doddering old boys at Johnny’s are fixing [to] have waffles.

America – It’s like Roy’s songs, so cheap and so goddamned beautiful it makes you want to cry. Or sing. You never know which.

Not news, but timely nonetheless… what with Rumsfeld sharpening the always hovering “traitor” rhetoric, we are a ways past his famous “known unknowns” of 2003… and the dicey disclosure that masses of cluster bombs were dropped on Lebanon by the israelis in the closing hours, 72 of those hours, of the war waged to revenge the “kidnapped” soldiers. What a fucking joke. And the soldiers? Who’s got ’em? Right.

Bush, Blair, Olmert. Murderous bunch. Having fun they are, the time of their lives… One would think at least Olmert would fall… not yet it seems.

Anyway. Looking back:

SITES: When did you begin to suspect that the official truth in Vietnam was different from the ground truth?

SEARCY: I can give you one example. In the fall of 1967 there were the beginnings of large anti-war demonstrations in U.S. In our unit in Saigon, we were doing high fives watching this on television and thought, “The U.S. can’t continue the war against this kind of opposition in the streets.” Then — I think it was November 1967 — Gen. William Westmoreland was called home to address Congress and he said that these anti-war demonstrations were damaging the morale of the troops and they had to stop. When we read this we thought, “Where did that come from?” People who wanted to end the war are standing behind the troops because we want to go home. The truth was not conveyed to the people or the media. […]

SITES: Let’s fast forward to your current work in Vietnam. Through the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Fund you’ve started a program called Project Renew, which is helping to remove UXOs [unexploded ordnance] and landmines from a region of Vietnam heavily affected by the war.

SEARCY: Quang Tri Province is the site of the former 17th Parallel, where North and South Vietnam were divided. It was the DMZ but that was a complete misnomer because it was the most heavily bombed place in world. We had 24-hour bombing raids by B-52s and now much of the region is still contaminated with bombs and mines.

A group of about twenty vets from the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Fund visited Quang Tri some years back and we decided we had to do something. We secured the funding, in great part because of a former Vietnam veteran who fought and was wounded in Quang Tri, Christos Cotsakos, the founder of eTrade. […]

Yes yes… well, why would the US Government be expected to do anything… better the conscience inside the pocketbook of the eTrade fortune… Never paid reparations either, much less unexploded ordnance removal.

And, still not news…

…We learned that was wrong in Vietnam. The Vietnamese fought in the south without any aircraft and the U.S. had the most powerful air power in the word and we still couldn’t defeat a determined force who just wanted us out, who wanted us to leave Vietnam.

I think the situation in Iraq just might be the same. If we left Iraq there would probably be continued chaos but I can’t see how it could be any worse than it is today when we see the terrible bombings and killings every day.

Like this:

Related

So much bloodthirstyness, and laws only matter if they’re applied punitively to underpaid immigrant workers or the poor or other minorities. The family of an escaped prisoner were on CNN this morning, portraying him as some victim. I’m sure the self-same rednecks would be screaming for blood if it was an escaped black prisoner shooting at state troopers.

Family and friends said Phillips, while a career thief who had spent nearly half his life in jail, had never before been violent and would not shoot a trooper. A reward for help leading to his arrest and conviction — increased to $225,000 from $50,000 on Friday — has gone uncollected.

Authorities say his disdain for police was well known. Sheriff’s officials said he left a note for officials when he was released or transferred from the Chautauqua County jail several years ago, threatening “to splatter pig meat all over Chautauqua County.”

The April jailbreak also wasn’t Phillips’ first, and friends said he was determined not to go back. A “Wanted” poster warned that Phillips had threatened “suicide by cop.”

The advertisement you see on the left is an ad that appears today at the dailkos. The ad is promoting a seminar that will line the pockets of one Wayne Huizenga, who is a known major GOP supporter and personal friend to George W. Bush himself.

Mr. Huizenga has contributed $485,920 to Republican candidates, $35,950 to Democrats and $60,550 to special interests in 2006. Is this someone a liberal blog should be promoting? You be the judge.

I was just reading that… and wondering who the tool is that keeps replying to Rumi (who is a wonderful poster)…

I tried to re-register at Nowhere Web… I guess all his accounts were wiped maybe when the site was hacked. But it is refusing me in everyway possible. LOL. Tells me my moniker is too short… my pass word too short.

Michael Franti, world-renowned musician and human rights worker, travels to Iraq, Palestine and Israel to explore the human cost of war with a group of friends, some video cameras and his guitar.

A compelling soundtrack, visual and musical montages and Franti’s intimate voiceovers make the film speak to the MTV, X, Y & Z generations, as well as the baby-boomers. A true armchair travel film pulling the audience into these war zones in the company of Michael’s guitar, eloquence and wit – you feel the humanity, artistic resilience and sometimes horrific experience of what it’s like to live under the bombs and military occupation.

With its guerrilla style footage captured in active war zones, the documentary is unlike the many academic and politically driven pieces in the marketplace, instead offering the audience a sense of intimate travel and the opportunity to hear the voices of everyday people living, creating and surviving under the harsh conditions of war and occupation.

Television. One nation, under one God, has turned into one nation under the influence of one drug.

Television. And one man who is the master of this medium, the president of the U.S. of A., Ronald Reagan.

Television, the drug of the nation, breeding ignorance, and feeding radiation.

TV! Is the reason why less than ten percent of our nation reads books daily. Why most people think Central America means Kansas, Communism means unamerican, and apartheid is a new headache remedy.

Television, the drug of the nation, breeding ignorance, and feeding radiation.

TV! Is the stomping ground for political candidates, where bears in the woods are chased by Grecian formula’d bald eagles. Where all you need to get elected is to make monkey movies (just ask Clint and Ronnie) and where straight teeth in your mouth are more important than the words that come out of it.

Television, the drug of the nation, breeding ignorance, and feeding radiation.

TV! Is the place where self-cancelling phrases like Pop-Art, Fresh-Frozen, and Military-intelligence have become standard.

TV! Is the place where words are redefined, like “Contra” to “Freedom Fighter”, and Sandinista to Repressive Regime.

Television, the drug of the nation, breeding ignorance, and feeding radiation.

TV! Is a place where the pursuit of happiness has become the pursuit of trivia, where toothpaste and cars have become sex objects, and where Sesame Street is more real than Hill Street.

Television, the drug of the nation, breeding ignorance, and feeding radiation.

Kansas? I really think the Vatican should be relocated to Kansas. The whole state should be papal. Give Ratzi some real estate to rule over. And it would make the Washington-Vatican axis a lot more manageable, geographically.

Hey! … I’m in the mountains – family farms, ski spots and historical whatnot in beautiful upstate NY (or just outside the city and its developed outer suburban satellites). Different set of parents we are visiting. Rain has stopped and sun is coming in and out. Will walk or jog a certain stretch of fields and farms that it is virtually impossible to spend a few minutes in and not be visited by a sense of peace … meditation made easy. The twang of “guitar frogs” as weve dubbed them, are our musicians where we find them.

Speaking of things to protest, like the war on Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, (Iran?) and on the poor in New Orleans… (When did the war on poverty change to the war on the poor, btw? Or was that just a time out some of us had…?)… and in keeping with your excellent coverage on it…

On the plane from Raleigh to NYC I met a lovely young woman, nurse, from New Orleans, now NC, who decided along with her mom, a resident still, or former resident, of the 9th Ward (still has her wrecked house, temporarily living in Baton Rouge) to just get up and get away together – take a trip to NYC to see the play The Color Purple during the Labor Day weekend. Lovely, lovely people. We realized we both share in our locales an anniversary early this month of devastation, both made worse by the behaviors of the criminal BushCo. And the daughter said Nagin, who she would have voted for, is now laying low, not doing much to help. She wants her mom to hold onto her house, fix it back up. Gave her my number to call if they have any questions or concerns while in NYC, whatever, and a few suggestions of where to wander in the city. Upon arrival her mom kissed me and said she felt they had found a friend. I said they had.

Marisa, your coverage is great, btw. Such coverage too is friendship to the people of NO… Watching DN last Mon or Tues I was blown away by a Palast piece … the sight of a boarded up, very decent housing large project, post Katrina, that the govt is prohibiting owners to return to … even though the housing was not damaged to any great extent by the hurricane or flooding. Quite inhabitable. But seems the powers that be have … er… other plans, shall we say.

Fuck em. Move back in, people, move the fuck back in … tear down those fucking boards. Some of them are doing that; a woman Greg Palast helped “break in” to her govt vandalized/violated apt – numbers scrawled on the walls to target it for “changes,” for example, cried out , “This aint nature, this is MAN MADE destruction!”

My Labor Day wish – that a revolt of the people, brown, white, the underserved and underprivileged…. swells and spread and is the next flood to hit that victimized city. I am forever hopeful… Something has got to give…

And speaking of music, protest music (this thread/Franti), and America the good and the ugly, here’s something along those lines – Haden will kick off Amy Goodman’s new book tour… again, at Cooper Union. That is a cool place. Original space, a town hall, where Lincoln once spoke. Also where we protested our rent hikes this year. Saw Amy there launching her last book. And now this…

From Friday’s DN –

CHARLIE HADEN: And, you know, I was on tour with Pat Metheny in 2003, and we did an album called Beyond the Missouri Sky. It was a duet. We’re both from Missouri. And it was all these beautiful Americana songs and really well received. And so we were doing a tour for this music, and we were in Italy and in Spain, especially. We were walking down streets in different cities, and we would see unfurled from balconies of the apartment houses, “Not In Our Name.” And that’s when Iraq had been attacked. People talk about a war in Iraq. There’s no war in Iraq. It was an invasion and an occupation. And the people in Europe really cared, you know. And when I saw all these banners from the balconies saying, “Not In Our Name,” that stuck with me. And when I did this record, that’s what I called it.

AMY GOODMAN: Not in Our Name.

CHARLIE HADEN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And in Not in Our Name, you have this medley of songs you call “America the Beautiful.”

CHARLIE HADEN: There were so many songs that we wanted to do. And Carla composed a song. I composed a song. And the medley was “America the Beautiful” combined with “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is the African American national anthem in the United States, very famous song and beautiful song. And then we did Ornette Coleman’s “Skies of America.” And we did — you know, there was another guy, Gary McFarland, who was a jazz composer/arranger back in the late ’60s, who made an album called America the Beautiful. He was one of the guys that spoke out, you know. And we patterned one of the arrangements after his arrangement. And we did “Adagio for Strings.” I wanted to do all American composers. “This Is Not America” by Pat Metheny, which was in the movie, The Falcon and the Snowman, and David Bowie sings it at the end. And then we did Carla’s song, “Blue Anthem,” my song, “Not in Our Name.” We did “Amazing Grace,” which I used to sing, you know, in church. And we did “Goin’ Home,” which has become kind of like a folksong in the United States, which was actually from the “Largo” from the New World Symphony by Dvorak. And “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the title being Not in Our Name had an effect on its reception, in terms of the conventional, you know, awards?

CHARLIE HADEN: Well, you know, I really don’t have time to even dwell on those things. I know that a lot of those things happen, and I have so much to do that I don’t really think about that. I know that it probably wasn’t nominated for a Grammy because of its politics. But, you know, who am I to say? You know, I make the music, and what happens after I make the music, I hope, is a positive thing for people and causes them to start thinking about, this shouldn’t be in our name either. But I’ve had, you know, many people come up to me and say, “It’s really great that you did this,” and “Thank you for doing this.” And that’s rewarding to me.

We were just in South Africa playing at the Cape Town Festival, and I was there with my wife Ruth and Quartet West. And there was a gentleman there that was in the parliament, and he came up to me. He says, “Can I have coffee with you?” And so we went and had coffee, and he said, “You know, you politicized me when I was a young man. I listened to your first Liberation Orchestra recording, and I started reading about Che Guevara, and I started reading about the Spanish Civil War. I started reading about all these different things.” And he said, “And I was living in a one-room shack with my family. Eleven kids, no running water, whatever, back in apartheid,” you know. And he said, “Then I joined the ANC, and I was arrested, put in solitary confinement, and I thought about your music. It kept me going. And when I was released and Nelson Mandela freed me” — and he said, “I play your music all the time.” He said, “It’s because of you that I was politicized.”

He said, “I had to come and thank you for this, because you’re here in Cape Town.” And he said, “I wanted you to know what you did for my life.” And he said, “I want you” — to Ruth and I, he said, “I want you and your wife to meet my wife and my sons.” And it was so great, you know, and tears came to our eyes when he was talking about his confinement and what he had to go through. And he says, “Now I go to parliament every day, and I listen to your record with Hank Jones called Steal Away every morning at five.” And that just knocked me out. So it’s things like that that make everything worthwhile, all the sacrifices, all of the, whatever, criticism. But, you know, there’s more enjoyment and there’s more fulfillment than there is criticism, and that’s what I’m happy about.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Charlie, 50 years of making music and many years to come, is there anything you wish you had done, and do you plan to do it now?

CHARLIE HADEN: I’ve been so lucky to play with great musicians, most of whom I wanted to play with and I sought out when I was in my younger stages, and, you know, I wouldn’t do anything different, except I would seek out as many musicians to life the way I am and dedicated to beauty the way I am, because it’s not really about categories, like jazz, it’s about beautiful music and playing music from all over the world with other musicians who are dedicated, because it’s up to us to bring beauty back into this world. It’s up to people in the arts, the painters, the writers, the composers, the dance troupes, everybody, the actors, the people who write poetry. You know, it’s up to us to try to make a difference in this world and try to make this planet a better to live for all the human beings and stop the cruelty and the devastation that’s going on, you know, and have a great place.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think you can do that with your music?

CHARLIE HADEN: I’m going to try.

AMY GOODMAN: And do you think jazz is going to continue?

CHARLIE HADEN: Jazz will always continue. It’s an art form that’s very, very powerful, very, very powerful, and has a powerful message of improvisation and spontaneity. And there’s a lot of young people dedicated to it, and they’re being born every day, you know. And it’s not just in jazz. It’s in all different kinds of music that young people want to express themselves in the language of whatever art form they’re in. And that’s the most important thing. I started the Jazz Studies out at California Institute of the Arts in 1982, and that’s a campus that has all of the arts, you know, and I tell my students — I mean, there’s young people from all over the world that come to study with me about the spirituality of improvisation.

AMY GOODMAN: Jazz legend Charlie Haden. On September 11th, he and his Liberation Music Orchestra will join us here in New York at the historic Cooper Union Great Hall at Astor Place to launch Democracy Now!’s 10th anniversary 80-city tour.

Great photos, again, Mc… oh god, that “spent shells” photo… they are like the spent cocks of the cocksure cocksuckers of war (miserable pricks!)… arent they? Damn, that was how they struck me, toute suite. Har.

And yeah, UnFuck is fucktastic,too!

Happy Labor Day weekend to one and all. May our labors be rewarding and be rewarded….

Q Why didn’t the government step in to stop it then, and why isn’t it stepping in to stop it now?

A One thing the federal government did once Katrina hit was waive all the environmental and occupational safety rules that would require people working down there to have adequate protection to protect their health.

Q Why would the government waive those rules?

A Those rules are waived because it will make cleanup much cheaper. If in fact you follow the rules and you certify cleanup people, properly equipped, the costs for remediation would be substantially more expensive. And according to the laws, government really is on the hook for doing and paying for that type of cleanup. But the federal government has so much money going overseas that it does not want to budget more money to remediate the Gulf Coast areas properly.

On top of that, the government wanted to rely on volunteer organizations as opposed to the government following the rules and doing it themselves. … And the people who run the volunteer organizations — God bless ’em, their hearts are in the right place, but they’re not experienced people in the field of remediation where there are toxics, asbestos, etc., involved. So waiving the rules allowed the government to save billions of dollars and expose hundreds of thousands of people to the high risk of cancer 10 and 20 years down the line.

Tasini got 44% and Hillary 56% of MoveOn poll, btw. Dont know how they did their Lamont poll… wasnt paying attention … but I assume it was far in advance of primary and given more build up and/or more time for participating in the poll. Cant imagine not, as the Tasini poll was quite fly by night… Blink and you’d miss it. Still, at least they listened at long last. Baby step.

FYI: in the lovely 1996 omnibus welfare bill… the law was changed. It USED to be that the government was mandated to maintain public housing, unit for unit. IOW, replacement.

No more as of that lovely bill – that Clinton is still congratulating himself over…

Now, I am sure the old law was not followed all the time everywhere. But think of the difference.

ALso from what i have read… forget at which, Iberville or which, but there have been efforts to re-enter units – en masse. Tear down the boards.

I heard lame, as in he could barely get it out himself, excuse from Isaacson, who is a Vice Chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority… Isaacson formerly of CNN now at the Aspen Inst. What a guy. The cover story is they want to “re do” the big housing projects for mixed use. LOL.

Just disgusting. Those big much touted bills always bother me. I think we map out our Romanovian selves in them. We sure did in that one.

also, FYI, ‘stop me before i vote again’ has several posts up on the MoveOn Tasini vote. I did not manage to link to them here yet…

from minute one, all they have done, really, despite those who managed to be helped, all the PTB have done is use Katrina/Rita.

The theme of ‘Wal Mart can do it better’ was being pushed… in just those words on the cables.. within just a few days. And what do we see now… the old, always white, always too xtian RC (who assisted the government with the nasty secret removal of poor, mostly black, people to be disbursed thru out the nation) is now in partnership with W-M.

And the idea that volunteerism and charity and the “faith based way” should do a lot (and they SHOULD help but with the government leading), worked so well for the government.

As they slough off – to further destruction – any sort of responsive government “for the people”… and day by day people forget and ”agree” with the oligarchy that “bootstraps” are best. SO “best” that the government can step away.

And the biggest argument agaisnt this is that “private”, which is what corporate and religious assistance is, is not accountable.

We are speeding backwards to the old work houses of past centuries and to the feudal world.

In large parts of Gaza nowadays, there is no electricity. Israel bombed the only power station in Gaza, and more than half the electricity supply will be cut off for at least another year. There’s hardly any water. Since there is no electricity, supplying homes with water is nearly impossible. Gaza is filthier and smellier than ever: Because of the embargo Israel and the world have imposed on the elected authority, no salaries are being paid and the street cleaners have been on strike for the past few weeks. Piles of garbage and obnoxious clouds of stink strangle the coastal strip, turning it into Calcutta.

I have enormous sympathy and respect for the author of this article, Gideon Levy, who must endure vicious attacks from readers. Just read the repulsive, racist remarks in some of the comments to his articles; the first comment one is typical, referring to the Palestinians as “Philistines”. In that comment BTW, the “realistic peace plan” is nothing more than ethnic cleansing. I still want to believe that Israel can veer itself away from this destructive descent into racism. But it has been egged on by the US of A, Republicans and Democrats alike.

So.

Former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing has been released on a $1 million bail after pleading not guilty to the murder of Sam DuBose. Tensing, who is white, fatally shot the 43-year-old African-American man on July 19 after stopping him for not having a front license plate. Two additional officers, Phillip Kidd and David Lindenschmidt, hav […]

As the Senate prepares to vote to defund Planned Parenthood, we look at the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-choice group behind the attacks on Planned Parenthood. The group was founded by David Daleiden who is seen in the undercover sting videos using a fictional name. We speak to RH Reality Check's Sharona Coutts, who wrote the piece, "Exclu […]

The Senate is planning to vote as soon as Monday to strip Planned Parenthood of $500 million in federal funding. The vote comes as Planned Parenthood is coming under fire from anti-choice activists after the release of a series of undercover sting videos were published online. The heavily edited videos suggest the organization profits from supplying aborted […]

In Portland, Oregon, law enforcement officers have removed Greenpeace activists who spent 40 hours suspended from the St. Johns Bridge in order to block an icebreaking ship commissioned by oil giant Shell from leaving for the Arctic. Hundreds of activists have been gathering on the bridge and in kayaks since Tuesday night in efforts to stop Shell's plan […]

On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Drake, a former Senior Executive at the National Security Agency, says he was targeted by the NSA because he exposed that the agency had intel that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and because he blew the whistle on a massive secret surveillance program aimed at Americans

James K. Gailbraith says, IMF is demanding a substantial reduction of the Greek debt to participate in any new deal and meanwhile German law makers are refusing to approve a new bail-out without the IMF

James K. Galbraith a member of the working group advising the former finance minister Varoufakis on 'Plan B' says there were great impositions imposed on the Greek government including certain procedures that removed control from the government and placed them in the hands of creditor institutions

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump, the man to beat in this week's first televised Republican presidential debate, said on Sunday he does not plan to attack his rivals and downplayed expectations for his performance, saying "I'm not a debater."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. backers of the Iran nuclear deal are increasingly confident of enough Democratic support to ensure it survives review by Congress, despite fierce opposition by majority Republicans and a massive lobbying drive.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will unveil on Monday the final version of his plan to tackle greenhouse gases from coal-fired power plants, kicking off what is expected to be a tumultuous legal battle against federal environmental regulators by the coal industry and its political allies.

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from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.